


little moons, little candles

by pyladic



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy
Genre: Bad Parenting, Freeform, Multi, Reconciliation, Stream of Consciousness, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 02:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyladic/pseuds/pyladic
Summary: Loosely based on Lights Out - written as a prize for a contest on the Great Comet Amino.





	little moons, little candles

"So. What do you remember?" Pearl looked across the table to her, over her cup of Thai tea. The straw was bright orange plastic, chewed on the end. It was hard to imagine Pearl doing something so undignified. Pearl's fingernails were painted a baby blue color, getting a little chipped at the tips. Rose tried to imagine her chewing on those, two. It was easier than looking her in the eye. Her hair tangled in itself in the slight breeze, but the weather was pleasant for a Portland April. It wasn't raining for once, for which Rose was eternally thankful.

She considered the question for a moment. What did she remember?

She remembered the different lives they'd both led. The ones where she and Pearl lived happily together for their whole lives, with no men and no lies to come between them. Those were the lives that Rose liked best, she thought. There were no disappointments, and no anger, and any problems between them were resolved as quickly as they came up.

In at least one of them, she never went to the Bear at all. She climbed the ladder to the treehouse herself, anger twisting her stomach into knots, the grip of a knife clenched in her hand, eyes flashing fury. The screams ricocheted through her memory, the color of the blood staining her hands, her hair, her face - rose red. In that one, she wasn't sure how it ended. She couldn't have said if their deaths eased the rage or just made it worse.

It was always Pearl that changed. Pearl became the ancient woman with the pieces of stardust in her wizened hands, the woman who sold her the camera, with little blue flowers in her hair, the soldier with ramrod straight posture, eyes lowered, hair slicked back neatly, beige uniform neat and clean. _and the blood spattered across her cheek after the pistol's report, and the soldier fell on the grimy cobblestones glittering in the rain, hair falling in front of her eyes, and she was so still, so still-_

Her mother. In one of the lives Pearl was her mother. And in that one - the only one where Rose changed - they were happy for a time. In that lifetime Lady Usher told her stories, and Roxie sat up and listened with wide, wondering eyes. In that life she had a father and a mother and a brother and a lover. Would that she'd turned him away the moment she saw him. But Roxie was young and pretty, and desperate for a moment to breathe and get away from the voices in her head. 

"Lights out," her mother said kindly, and blew out the candle, and teenaged Roxie would sit up for hours, waiting for the house to go quiet so she could sneak out the window to meet her lover - her lovely, older, experienced lover. But then he left, left her all alone, and the next month they found out that he didn't leave her with as little as she'd thought.

Roxie went to her mother first, hoping she'd understand. It was a mistake. Her mother had told her that her mom wasn't very nice, and she hadn't listened, and they all shared the same blood, and her mother was shouting, face contorted and twisting in fury, hair tangling around her face in furious tendrils -

Fear strangled the words bubbling up in her throat. Roxie ran and didn't come back for two days, and when she did, they pretended it had never happened at all.

But she preferred to think of the younger, happier times from that lifetime. The times when her mother would take her on long walks through the trees, and they'd wait for the stars to come out, and her mother would tell them all their names. Where sh'ed learned them, Roxie had never known. Never thought to ask. Maybe it was a leftover memory from one of their other lifetimes together. Maybe the Astronomer had taught her, taken her up to his telescope and showed them all to her. Maybe he'd written down what she saw too.

Pearl always changed, in every lifetime. Rose had never learned the trick of it. She couldn't be anything other than what she was already. Angry, and short tempered, and selfish, and unable to let go of anything. And Pearl - Pearl was clever and beautiful, and she knew how to hide, and how to lie. How else had she concealed her affair for so long? She no longer wondered how Pearl had gotten so good at telling her stories - Pearl had been weaving them for her in every lifetime they'd spent together. And now - now what?

If Rose wasn't the girl with blood on her hands and fury in her eyes anymore, then Pearl didn't have to be the woman who took everything from her, the liar, the storyteller. Maybe this time they could start again. They could be kind to one another, and she could call that subway driver and ask him out for coffee, and this time, maybe things would be alright.

Pearl was still waiting for an answer to her question. Rose gave her a tiny, tentative smile. It felt rusty, the muscles unused for lifetimes.

"Not much." She folded her hands in her lap, half terrified that Pearl would catch her in the lie. There was a fledgling part of her that didn't want to disappoint her, to hurt her. Rose looked up. "But maybe you could remind me."

Pearl broke into a smile, wide and earnest. "I'd like that," she said softly. It felt like a confession. "I'd like that very much."

Their other lifetimes could wait. Later, they could untangle the webs of hurt and deception and betrayal, and try to salvage something good from the wreckage. For now, they would sit here in the afternoon light, and sip Thai tea, and talk and laugh together, and later, they'd go back to Pearl's and drink whiskey and eat pizza until late into the night, and joke about men, but this time, they'd take the bus instead.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fun little warmup piece! Your comments and kudos feed the cockles of my cold, cold heart.


End file.
